There’s a brutal truth that Dane Atkinson owns up to about his past: “Many times I’ve hired women at less [pay] than I’ve hired a man for similar roles,” he says.

The women had negotiated poorly, according to Atkinson, a serial entrepreneur and former CEO of the website builder and hosting service Squarespace.

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Although not explicitly stated, the result was clear: “I would get rewarded from my shareholders and the board for doing a great job of hiring all those ladies at such less pay,” he says.

Atkinson is not alone. Despite the 1963 passage of the Equal Pay Act, which requires men and women to receive equal pay for equal work at the same place of employment, women on average earn $0.77 for every dollar earned by men, according to the White House. The pay gap is even wider for women of color: on average, African-American women earn $0.64 for every dollar earned by white men, and Latinas earn $0.56.

In the face of these dismal statistics, US companies face increasing pressure to overhaul employee compensation. Following a push from the White House, the US labor department is overseeing a program requiring federal contractors and subcontractors to submit wage data by gender, race and job classification.

Companies getting serious about closing gender pay gaps will likely find that conducting an annual salary audit won’t be enough to keep wage disparities at bay. An audit is a good place to start, but both Atkinson and Australian telecom firm Telstra say it takes a lot more than that to make lasting change to ensure women get fair wages.

Determined to atone for his past, Atkinson pledged that his next company would be different. In 2011, he founded the New York-based marketing analytics company SumAll, and implemented a transparent salary policy. At any time, SumAll’s 50 employees can view an online document that holds the salaries and pay history of all their colleagues.

Atkinson thinks a big reason pay disparities exist is because employees usually don’t know what other employees earn. When some people negotiate and others don’t, salary inequities take root and grow over time, he says.

When employees see where they fit financially among their peers and across the company, it eliminates the guesswork about what their compensation should be, Atkinson says, and creates an open environment to negotiate a fair salary.

SumAll’s salary transparency policy quickly and organically corrects the bulk of employee pay disparities, he claims. “Whenever someone spends time looking at their compensation schedule, it’s usually when they come to start a conversation.”

The company also conducts an annual salary audit aimed at closing any lingering gaps. Although Atkinson wishes more companies would put salary transparency policies in place, he knows the system isn’t perfect: pay gaps still exist for both men and women at SumAll, but he says “no one here is off by more than 5%”. That marks a vast improvement over the 30% pay gaps that Atkinson says he has witnessed in previous roles.

But its methods aren’t easy: there’s a financially measurable time-suck from increased salary conversations with employees, Atkinson says, and he can’t use an overinflated salary to lure a star potential worker without throwing off the company’s equilibrium.

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Can big companies afford to be transparent about pay

Still, some would argue that all of these efforts may be easier at startups like SumAll and Buffer than at larger companies. What can big companies do?

Telstra, the Australian telecommunications giant, employs roughly 32,000 people and operates within a traditional hierarchical structure. But Telstra too has been working to close its gender wage gap ever since a 2007 salary audit revealed its pay equity problem.

Telstra’s approach includes collecting comprehensive salary data and employment metrics and then analyzing them annually in different ways, according to Troy Roderick, general manager of diversity at Telstra.

By comparing salaries of men and women who have been doing the same role for the same length of time at the same level of performance, for example, the company is able to identify the differences in average salaries within the company. Telstra also drills down into the data to find pay disparities occurring at the individual level.

Just as importantly, the company has also set aside a budget to make up pay discrepancies.

Although audits play a key role when evaluating for pay discrimination, “it’s important to understand that just giving women more money is not the long term answer to the gender pay gap because the issue has complex components”, Roderick says.

Telstra operates with the belief that it cannot achieve pay equity without greater gender equality. Telstra has instituted a variety of gender equality initiatives, including a web portal devoted solely to enticing women to apply for jobs, recruiter training to use a gender-neutral selection process, and the incorporation of pay equity into salary negotiations. Other efforts include flexible work time and mentorship programs to develop female candidates for leadership positions.

Telstra won’t discuss specifics about the impact of its pay-equity efforts, but Roderick claims the company has seen a progressive closing of the gap.

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No quick wins

Beyond closing the pay gap, another key part of gender equality is gender equity, Atkinson says. He has helped SumAll enact more gender-neutral hiring practices. Employees vote in new hires and select which coworkers lead team projects, which Atkinson claims gives women an opportunity to build a more inclusive workplace.

Women make up 34% of SumAll’s workforce – which mostly consists of technical jobs, such as engineers and data analysis – while females account for only 26% of computing professionals in the US, according to the most recent research by the American Association of University Women. At Telstra, women make up 31% of the workforce, which Roderick says represents a 5.8% increase from last year. Both SumAll and Telstra aim to continue to boost the percentage of women in their companies. Atkinson and Roderick both say their work to close their companies’ gender wage gaps has been worth it, as they have seen payoffs in areas such as employee retention.

“Humans really connect their compensation to their value in life,” Atkinson says. The direct cost of replacing workers can reach as high as 50% to 60% of an employee’s annual salary, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. According to Atkinson, companies risk higher turnover rates when employees feel mistreated because they aren’t being compensated fairly.

Regardless of the approach used to close gender wage gaps, there’s one thing Roderick thinks companies should keep in mind. “There are no quick wins,” he says.